Chris Paquin

AI, Virtualization, Containers, Infrastructure, Linux

  • How to Add Standalone Puppet Agents to Foreman

    foreman_medium
    This example will walk us through the process of adding a standalone Puppet host to Foreman for the purpose of managing the host through Puppet. In this instance we are going to create a standalone-hostgroup for the server.

    Note that the Foreman server must be able listening on ports 8140, and 6163 (according to Puppet documentation). My RHEL7 Foreman host was listening on these ports, but the firewall was blocking any inbound connections. I corrected this with the commands shown below.

    First I needed to determine my default firewalld zone.

    # firewall-cmd –get-default-zone

    Then I ran the commands below to punch a hole in the firewall to allow the required traffic. I also reloaded firewald.

    # firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-port=8140/tcp
    # firewall-cmd –permanent –zone=public –add-port=61613/tcp

    On the puppet client, install the puppet agent

    # yum -y install puppet

    Now we add an entry for the puppet server in /etc/puppet/puppet.conf in section [agent], where <PUPPETSERVER-FQDN> is the FQDN of your Foreman Server

    server = <PUPPETSERVER-FQDN>

    Now save the file.

    Then on the Puppet client run the following command.

    # puppet agent -t waitforcert 60

    Log into Foreman WebUI.
    Navigate to => “Infrastructure” => “Smart Proxies” => “Certificates”

    In the list located the new puppet client and click on sign to accept the key for the new host. The host that I am adding is osd01.lab.localdomain.

    NOTE: Once you have accepted the key you need to run the puppet client again (puppet agent -t)  on the client. Otherwise the client will not appear in on the “All hosts” page

    foreman1

    Now Lets create a new Host Group to use for this server. Come on, its will be a blast.

    Navigate to => “Configure” => “Host groups“. Select the green “New Host Group” button and then add your host group. Here I have added a host group called “Standalone Hosts”. See below.

    foreman2

    Now we need to add our new client to this new host group. We do so by navigating to => “Hosts” => “All hosts“. Then select “Edit” to the left of the host.

    foreman3

    Click “Submit” an the bottom of the page and you are good to go.

  • How to Install Foreman on Centos/RHEL 7

    foreman_medium

    Here is a very short and to the point guide on how to install Foreman on Centos7. This guide can also be used perform a plain vanilla install of Foreman on RHEL7.

    Source: Installing The Foreman on CentOS 7

  • How to Reset Cisco Catalyst 3560 Back to Factory Defaults

    3560-2

    Need to reset your Cisco Catalyst 3560 back to the factory default settings? Have you forgotten your password? Well you have come to the right place.

    Note that I am assuming that you have already established a console connection to the switch using a Cisco serial cable (rollover cable).

    Here are the details of my 3560G in case you were wondering…

    s3560#show ver
    Cisco IOS Software, C3560 Software (C3560-IPSERVICESK9-M), Version 12.2(58)SE2, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
    Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
    Copyright (c) 1986-2011 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
    Compiled Thu 21-Jul-11 01:44 by prod_rel_team

    First you need to power down the switch. Once the switch is powered off, hold down the mode button, and power the switch on. The switch will boot up and you should see the switch prompt as shown below.

    Connect-1

    Now type flash_init. Your output should be similar to what you see below

    switch: flash_init
    Initializing Flash…
    flashfs[0]: 547 files, 19 directories
    flashfs[0]: 0 orphaned files, 0 orphaned directories
    flashfs[0]: Total bytes: 32514048
    flashfs[0]: Bytes used: 15487488
    flashfs[0]: Bytes available: 17026560
    flashfs[0]: flashfs fsck took 11 seconds.
    …done Initializing Flash.

    Check out the contents of flash and locate config.text and vlan.dat (if it exists).

    switch: dir flash:
Directory of flash:/

2  -rwx  564       <date>               vlan.dat
3  -rwx  1914      <date>               private-config.text
5  drwx  192       <date>               c2960-lanbasek9-mz.122-58.SE2
6  -rwx  3096      <date>               multiple-fs
7  -rwx  2289      <date>               config.text

    Now delete the vlan.dat and config.text.

    switch: del flash:config.text
Are you sure you want to delete "flash:config.text" (y/n)?y
File "flash:config.text" deleted

switch: del flash:vlan.dat
Are you sure you want to delete "flash:vlan.dat" (y/n)?y
File "flash:vlan.dat" deleted

    Note that you can also just rename the config.text and vlan.dat if you are not certain that you want to delete them.

    switch: rename flash:config.text flash:config.old

    Now type boot, to reboot the switch. Once the switch is rebooted you will see the System Configuration Dialog, and will have the opportunity “to enter the initial configuration dialog”.

  • New Red Hat/OpenStack RHCE Level Certification 

    Source: New Red Hat Certified Engineer in Red Hat OpenStack Credential

  • Analyzing the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform using Rally

    Source: Analyzing the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform using Rally

  • RHEV: How to Import a VMware ESXi OVA Disk Image into RHEV-M

    424782-cloud-computing

    Introduction

    In my lab, I am in the process of moving off of Vmware/ESXi and onto RHEV (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization). So far the learning curve has not been that bad….

    Installing and configuring RHEV-M was just as simple as installing a few packages on top of RHEL 6. I had an unused desktop that was more than up for the task.  For RHEV-H… Well I had just finished building out a new server for it. Once my initial hardware was up and running it was time to start moving virtual machines out of Vsphere.

    Virt-V2V Conversion Failures

    And this is when I started to run into trouble. Using virt-v2v, the process was simple for existing RHEL vms. I imported a couple of them without issue.

    However, I ran into a few issues when I started trying to import non RHEL VMs. In particular, my OpenVPN appliance running Ubuntu was putting up a good fight.

    virt-v2v: error: virt-v2v is unable to convert this guest type 
    (linux/ubuntu)
    If reporting bugs, run virt-v2v with debugging enabled and include the 
    complete output:

    Ok, very unexpected – so lets try another approach.

    OVA Import Failures

    This time I decided to attempt to export the VM as on OVA file. However this did not work either as the OVA file was not recognized as a gzip file by the rhevm-image-uploader (run from the RHEVM server).

    # rhevm-image-uploader -e pandora-export-vol01 upload vpn.lab.localdomain.ova
    Please provide the REST API password for the admin@internal oVirt Engine user (CTRL+D to abort):
    ERROR: not a gzip file

    The Workaround

    However not all was lost, as I was able to leverage the exported VM files to convert the the VMDK of my vm to img format.

    #qemu-img convert -f vmdk vpn.lab.localdomain-disk1.vmdk -O raw vpn.lab.localdomain-disk1.img

    Once the disk was successfully converted, I used qemu-info to verify its size.

    # qemu-img info vpn.lab.localdomain-disk1.img
    image: vpn.lab.localdomain-disk1.img
    file format: raw
    virtual size: 8.0G (8589934592 bytes)
    disk size: 2.8G

    I then logged into RHEV and created a new virtual machine which I named vpn.lab.localdomain. For all intents and purposes, it is just a placeholder VM with an empty 8GB disk.

    Then using rhevm-shell ran the following command to get a list of existing vms and their disks.

    [RHEVM shell (connected)]# list vms
    id : 93a873a0-2fc2-4d73-952e-58e934d7ecea
    name : vpn.lab.localdomain
    [RHEVM shell (connected)]# list disks
    id : d239f1c7-4fab-43fd-a7e9-ff5add0d53de
    name : vpn.lab.localdomain_Disk1

    I knew that the disk image for vpn.lab.localdomain was housed on the NFS mount below. All I needed was the UUID of the disk.

    # showmount -e freenas
    Export list for freenas:
    /mnt/freenas-vol01 192.168.0.0,10.1.0.0

    So I mounted the NFS share on my RHEVM server as /freenas-vol01

    # mount -t nfs freenas.lab.localdomain:/mnt/freenas-vol-1 /mnt

    I then navigated /freenas-vol01/4f46e5ca-a417-45d7-9dbf-2d400207fdaa/images and looked for a directory with this name (d239f1c7-4fab-43fd-a7e9-ff5add0d53de). Note that this is the same name as the UUID that I found a few steps above.

    Note: It’s the second one in the list.

    # ls -rlt
    drwxr-xr-x. 2 vdsm kvm 5 Sep 14 12:39 aa1c9b26-00f0-45b0-9cca-224339448347
    drwxr-xr-x. 2 vdsm kvm 5 Sep 14 12:45 d239f1c7-4fab-43fd-a7e9-ff5add0d53de
    drwxr-xr-x. 2 vdsm kvm 5 Sep 14 13:53 021227e4-bb19-4747-a7a9-e522402fa6fa
    drwxr-xr-x. 2 vdsm kvm 5 Sep 14 13:53 390298bc-94f0-477a-b437-5898e3f664be

    Now cd to d239f1c7-4fab-43fd-a7e9-ff5add0d53de and inspect its contents

    # ls -rlt
    total 949342
    -rw-r--rw-. 1 vdsm kvm 321 Sep 14 12:45 a50ce217-5c51-4f89-afe3-2c650a21c3b0.meta
    -rw-rw-rw-. 1 vdsm kvm 1048576 Sep 14 12:45 a50ce217-5c51-4f89-afe3-2c650a21c3b0.lease
    -rw-rw-rw-. 1 vdsm kvm 8589934592 Sep 14 16:44 a50ce217-5c51-4f89-afe3-2c650a21c3b0

    There are three files here, but only one is 8Gb in size, which is not coincidentally the same size of the disk I created. This is the new empty disk on our new vm.

    Now lets dd or original disk onto this disk. This overwrites the contents of the new disk, with the contents of the original disk.

    #dd if=/root/vpn.lab.localdomain-disk1.img of=a50ce217-5c51-4f89-afe3-2c650a21c3b0 bs=4M

    Much to my surprise I was able to boot up the vm without issue.

  • RHEV: How to Configure LACP Ports on a Cisco Catalyst Switch

    data_sheet_c78-530976-1

    Here is how to configure ports on a Cisco Switch for use as LACP (mode 4) uplinks for RHEV (Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization). Note that the configuration that I have defined below may need to be tweaked a bit depending on your configuration. I am not exactly using the most recent equipment in my lab at home.

    Note that all configurations are on a Cisco 3560G unless otherwise noted.

    RHEV Uplink Ports – Trunk Mode

    Configure your port channel similar to what is shown below. This configuration allows you to trunk multiple vlans. VLAN tagging will be required on the RHEV side.

    interface Port-channel1
    description trunk to RHEV Host1
    switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
    switchport trunk allowed vlan 101,192
    switchport mode trunk
    spanning-tree portfast disable
    spanning-tree bpduguard disable
    spanning-tree guard root

    Below is the configuration for the first physical port in the port channel.

    interface GigabitEthernet0/9
    description uplink to ETH0, RHEV Host1
    switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
    switchport trunk allowed vlan 101-104,192
    switchport mode trunk
    channel-protocol lacp
    channel-group 1 mode active

    Below is the configuration for the second physical port in the port channel.

    interface GigabitEthernet0/10
    description uplink to ETH1, RHEV Host1
    switchport trunk encapsulation dot1q
    switchport trunk allowed vlan 101-104,192
    switchport mode trunk
    channel-protocol lacp
    channel-group 1 mode active

    RHEV Uplink Ports – Access Mode

    Configure your port channel similar to what is shown below. In this configuration you are configuring an access port. No VLAN tagging required on the RHEV Side

    interface Port-channel2
    description Uplink to RHEV02
    switchport access vlan 101
    switchport mode access
    spanning-tree portfast disable
    spanning-tree bpduguard disable
    spanning-tree guard root

    Below is the configuration for the first physical port in the port channel.

    interface GigabitEthernet0/5
    description Uplink to RHEV02 – ETH0
    switchport access vlan 101
    switchport mode access
    channel-protocol lacp
    channel-group 2 mode active

    Below is the configuration for the first physical port in the port channel.

    interface GigabitEthernet0/6
    description Uplink to RHEV02 – ETH1
    switchport access vlan 101
    switchport mode access
    channel-protocol lacp
    channel-group 2 mode active

    Additional Information

    The port configuration that you need to use for RHEV (or KVM, or XEN) is going to be a bit different than what your network administrator may be used to configuring for ESX.  There are actually three settings which might give your network admin might be initially opposed to.  A bit about those below.

    > spanning-tree portfast disable

    Portfast is enabled when connecting to an end device such as a server, and is disabled when connecting to another layer 2 device such as a switch. With RHEV you are creating a software switch internal to the server, so portfast needs to be disabled.

    > spanning-tree bpduguard disable

    A Bridge Protocol Data Unit, is a data message sent between switches. Since we are creating software switches in RHEV, we need to allow BPDU. So we need to disable BPDU guard which will down a port if a BPDU data message is received.

    > spanning-tree guard root

    Root Guard allows the port to participate in STP. However, unlike BPDU Guard which will disable a port upon receipt of a BPDU data unit, the Spanning Tree Root Guard feature will allow BPDU’s through a port to maintain the spanning tree topology, however if it receives a superior BPDU, which indicates that another switch is trying to become the root bridge it will err-disable the port.

    Addendum

    Below is the configuration that I have in place on a Cisco 2950.

    Below is the configuration on the Port-Channel itself.

    interface Port-channel2
    description LACP to RHEV
    switchport trunk allowed vlan 101-104,192
    switchport mode trunk
    flowcontrol send off
    spanning-tree portfast disable
    spanning-tree bpduguard disable
    spanning-tree guard root

    Below is the configuration on the first physical port in the bond

    interface FastEthernet0/20
    description port-chan 2 interface
    switchport trunk allowed vlan 101-104,192
    switchport mode trunk
    channel-group 2 mode active
    channel-protocol lacp

    Below is the configuration on the second physical port in the bond

    interface FastEthernet0/21
    description lacp port channel 2
    switchport trunk allowed vlan 101-104,192
    switchport mode trunk
    channel-group 2 mode active
    channel-protocol lacp